


Relic of the Past

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Gen, Kidfic, Lore/Theory crafting, No beta we die like i will when procrastination catches up to me, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Worldbuilding, bedtime story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22540156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Ingrid tells Felix’s daughter a bedtime story, but tonight she begs for a different one.Or:  Ingrid shares the bloody origins of House Galatea. It may or may not traumatize her.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	Relic of the Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BiaPendragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiaPendragon/gifts).



> IIIII need to stop posting fic on my phone. ALSO this is an experiment for me because i rarely write kid fic and also i don’t usually do much lore theorizing but i saw a thread on Twitter and got Inspired so have some Ingrid telling felannie kid a bedtime story
> 
> Also I gift this to Bia because she’s really into Lore

Little Ava Jeanne Fraldarius’ bedroom looked  much like Ingrid’s own childhood abode. The shelves were stacked with books, miscellaneous toys spilling from a trunk at the foot of the low bed. A hand-carved rocking horse (Sir Gustave’s work, Ingrid suspected) stood in a corner near a small toy sword that looked as if it got a lot of use. The painted wooden doors of a wardrobe splayed open, revealing all manner of girlish garments fit for everything from royal court visits to the training grounds. 

Ava herself wriggled in her bed as Ingrid neared the end of the tale. The girl turned the page with a chubby hand, her blue eyes wide and enraptured as Ingrid read her the words they both knew so well. 

“‘And then the Emperor of all of Adrestia fell to his knees. The Lion of Blaiddyd raised his great lance Areadhbar, and the Emperor then realize he was not too proud to beg.’”

“‘For what do you wish?’ the Emperor asked’!” Ava read with more aplomb than a begging man would. “‘Name it, and I will see it granted.’”

“‘I ask for naught but a freedom for my people from your tyranny,’ Loog pronounced,” Ingrid continued. She smiled and ruffled Ava’s hair. 

“‘It is granted,’ said the Emperor, ‘but the Church!’” Ava’s finger traced the words on the page, her nose wrinkling in concentration. 

“‘The Church is my concern,’ Loog told the Emperor. Then he turned to face his troops, Kyphon and the Maiden at their fore, his most steadfast of allies, and proclaimed—“

“Wait, Auntie Ingrid”—Ava tugged at her sleeve—“what does ‘steadfast’ mean?”

Ingrid laughed. It seemed she latched onto a different mystery word or phrase every time they read the story together. She hummed thoughtfully, tapping her chin, and explained, “It means...faithful, through thick and thin.” She smoothed the blankets on Ava’s low bed and added, “Like your papa is steadfast for King Dimitri.”

“Oh!” Ava’s eyes lit up with understanding, for once resembling her mother more than her father (at least in appearance. “Then so are you!” Her tiny finger jabbed Ingrid’s arm so forcefully she wondered if her Crest activated. 

She rubbed her arm but smiled slowly, her chest warming at the girl’s assertion. “I guess I am, Ava.” She patted her shoulder and beckoned for her to return her attention to the book. “Now, let’s finish this; if you don’t go to sleep soon your mama will be mad at you.”

_ And at me, _ Ingrid added. 

Ava frowned, looking oddly pensive for someone as young as she. “I know how this one ends,” she said. “I want to read a new story instead.”

_ Stalling?  _ Ingrid guessed. Dimitri’s children (when younger) often stalled at bedtime, which was to say nothing of every small child she ever had the privilege of interacting with in the evening. 

But curiosity filled Ava’s eyes, intent on Ingrid’s face. So she smiled and said, “All right, but only if it’s a short one.”

“Oh, um…” For a heartbeat Ava looked uncertain, an emotion that did not suit her. “Can you tell me a new story, Auntie Ingrid?”

Ingrid’s mouth dried up as she stared at her best friend’s daughter. “A...new story?” she said. “About what?” Her heart beat a little faster against her ribs; it wouldn’t be the first time a too-young child demanded a tale about a too-recent war. 

Ava hummed, her eyes distant as she thought. “I don’t know. Anything you want? But something that I can’t read in a book so that it’s special and just for us.” She scowled, for an instant looking so much like Felix Ingrid had to bite back a laugh. “Mama says I have to share everything else with Ernest and Marius, but I want this story to be just mine.”

“I think I can do that,” Ingrid agreed while she set to thinking of a good story. 

Nothing from the war, she decided immediately, and nothing from her and Felix’s shared childhood, though she didn’t doubt Ava would find them entertaining. Grief still tainted those memories, and she wasn’t sure Felix himself would thank her for divulging them. 

No, what she needed was something more...distant, but something Ava already knew a little about. 

“You know, Ava,” Ingrid tried, though she allowed a smirk to curl her lips, “the Hero of Daphnel is a...cousin of mine.”

Ava’s eyes grew wider, her jaw dropping almost comically. “Really?” she squealed. “Auntie Ingrid, you never told me! Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Her fingers latched onto Ingrid’s arm as she all but bounced. “Does Papa know?” Horror filled her face. “Do Ernest and Marius know?”

Ingrid laughed, delighted with her reaction, but she carefully tugged her hand off her arm. “Yes, your papa knows,” she said. “I have the Crest of Daphnel, after all.”

“Oh, so that’s why!” Ava frowned then, tilting her head in confusion. “But isn’t your family G-Gala...um…”

“Galatea,” Ingrid clarified for her. “And yes, it is, so let me tell you the story of House Daphnel and House Galatea.” She patted the spot on the bed beside her. 

Ava accepted it as a wordless encouragement to settle down again. She stared unabashedly at Ingrid, attention rapt in a way that was flattering, though…

“It’s not a very happy story, Ava,” she warned, then wondering if she made a mistake even bringing it up. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

Ava nodded, the motion so vigorous it rocked her whole body. “Yes please,” she said. 

“All right.” Ingrid took a deep breath - weaving a story from the memory of family history was not the same as reading it from a book - and began:

“Once, just over a hundred years ago, the old Kingdom and the Leicester Alliance were one until Duke Riegan decided to fight his cousin on the throne and split from the Kingdom.

“In the middle of it all,” Ingrid continued, “was the great House Daphnel, right where the border Duke Riegan and the King of Faerghus drew lay. So the head of the house had to decide: to which would he give his loyalty. His long-time king, or to the sovereign duke?”

Ingrid wished Ashe had come with her, if only for a storytelling partner (among other reasons), but their duties in Fhirdiad rarely allowed them to travel beyond it together. And so far the story sounded so dry to her own ears, yet Ava still blinked at her, intent on her words. 

“Count Daphnel, an ambitious man, chose the duke over his king,” Ingrid told Ava, “and it would’ve been the end of that if not for his two sons.”

“What did they do?” Ava wondered.

“Well, the older son was now set to inherit his father’s lands,” Ingrid said. “You see, in those days it still mattered if you had a Crest, but suddenly in the new Alliance it didn’t so much.”

“Oh, did the younger son have a Crest?” Ava wondered. She pressed her palms together and chewed her lip, and Ingrid guessed she must’ve been thinking of her own Crest. 

“That is a very good guess,” Ingrid told her. When Ava grinned at her praise, she continued, “Count Daphnel wrote it into his will that he wished for his elder son without the Crest to inherit, disinheriting his younger son with the Crest.” She quirked an eyebrow and lowered her voice to what she hoped was an ominous tone, “But the younger son was not happy with this, nor had he been pleased when his father revealed his disloyalty to the King of Faerghus.”

Ava gasped. “Oh no,” she said. “What did he do?”

“‘Father,’” Ingrid boomed as if she was the shafted younger son of Daphnel. She jumped to her feet and picked up Ava’s toy sword. Her feet slipped into a fencing stance as she raised the sword against her own shadow dancing on the wall. “‘First you betray your king, but now you wish to betray your son?’

“‘You will have more potential in the new Alliance as a younger son than your brother would have had without a Crest in the Kingdom,’ said Count Daphnel.

“‘You are a fool,’ the younger son scolded his father.” Ingrid lowered the sword. “‘How could you favor my brother who cannot even wield the great lance Luín to protect our people, or have you betrayed them too?’”

Ava’s jaw dropped. “He said all that to his own  _ papa _ ?”

Ingrid bit her lip to keep from snorting at the irony. “Are you telling me you’ve never been so mad at yours?”

Ava frowned, thinking. “Only when he won’t let me stay up late or eat cake after supper or when Marius trains with him without me or when he’s in Fhirdiad so long Mama gets sad.”

Ingrid raised an eyebrow. “Only? Ava, that’s a lot of reasons to get mad.”

Ava grinned like a little imp. “Do you want to hear why I get mad at Mama?”

“No, no, why don’t we just continue the story so your papa doesn’t get mad at  _ me _ for keeping you up so late?” Ingrid suggested. 

She pouted. “But I want—“

Ingrid pointed the toy sword at Ava. “Carry on like this, and I may have to challenge you to a duel. Think you can defeat a royal knight?”

Ava crossed her arms. “Not  _ now _ , Auntie Ingrid,” she said, “but maybe when I’m bigger.”

“Well, unless you can duel me and win, then we’ll continue the story so you can sleep.”

“Fine,” Ava said, though her sulking didn’t last long as Ingrid slipped back into the role of storyteller. 

She bowed her head, mimicking the pain Daphnel must’ve felt to be so blatantly accused by his own flesh and blood. “‘My son,’ said Daphnel, and even then he could not bear to hear him so angry with him, ‘you are the fool if you think I made this decision lightly.’

“But the younger son could not be convinced his father did the right thing, so spurred by loyalty to the King of Faerghus and spurned by his own father, he disappeared from the very heart of Daphnel, taking the Relic Luín with him.”

Ava sucked in a breath at Ingrid’s dramatic pause. “Then what?”

“Then he reemerged in the eastern Kingdom, declaring himself the Count of the region Galatea by order of the King. And it might’ve been the end of that if he hadn’t taken Luín with him.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh no,” Ingrid agreed. She pitched her voice low and solemn as she carried on, “When Count Daphnel was informed of his wayward’s son ascendancy in Faerghus, he raised his battle flags and ordered his older son to march.

“‘Go to Galatea,’ he told his heir. ‘Reclaim Luín, for without it we are nothing and less than you would’ve been had we stayed loyal to the Kingdom.’

“‘And what of my brother?’ asked the heir.’” Ingrid swallowed then, suddenly, painfully aware of how young her rapt audience was. Oh, if Felix didn’t banish her from Fraldarius territory for telling his young daughter this story Annette certainly would. 

But she still continued, “Count Daphnel looked down at his eldest son, his eyes dull of pity before they hardened to steel. ‘He is no family of ours,’ he proclaimed. ‘I have but one son and do not acknowledge this traitor as our flesh and blood, so kill this poser Count Galatea should he stand in your way.’”

Ava’s eyes were so wide Ingrid worried they would pop out if her skull. “What happened then? Did he...his own brother?”

Ingrid marched across the bedroom, her boots clapping against the floor. “Daphnel’s elder son marched his army across the new border into the Kingdom, but the new Count Galatea was ready to ambush him with an army of his own in the depths of the Valley of Torment.”

She raised her sword and swung at her shadow. The sword’s own silhouette danced as she spun, dueling her own dark counterpart, the light wooden blade whipping through the air. 

“The armies clashes as viciously as the brothers, the elder an emissary of his father and the younger protecting his birthright and his future.” The tip of the sword found the blurred neck of her shadow. “At last, the younger brother gained the upper hand against his elder, and under the tip of the great lance Luín, the elder demanded, ‘You would kill your own brother?’”

A lump stuck in Ingrid’s throat then, as she watched the scene playing out in her mind’s eye. To think her family’s history began so viciously, amid the boiling ruins of Aillel… 

“‘No,’ said the younger brother, who towered over him, ‘but I would kill a traitor to my king.’ And then”—she slashed the toy sword along the wall with a nasty scrape—“he slew the man he called brother with the very Relic he was sent to retrieve, the same lance he could never wield for himself.”

Ingrid lowered the sword, her heart racing with both the theatrics of her shadow clash and the details of the story itself. She turned towards her enraptured audience, whose jaw hung open with shock. 

“His own brother?” Ava whispered, as if speaking it any louder would invite a curse. “But…”

Ingrid wondered if she thought of her own older brothers, the same two she fought and competed and quarreled with nearly as often as they clashed with each other. She loved them too, she knew, adored them as only a little sister could, but she whined about them leaving her out of their antics more often than not. 

She sat on the edge of Ava’s bed and clasped her hands in her lap. “The new Count Galatea returned to his new lands with a bloody lance and burns from the lava of Aillel,” Ingrid continued. “He won the battle and kept the Relic, but from then on the lands the King granted him to make his own resisted his efforts to make them bloom. His people, the same ones he accused his father of betraying, would never eat well off the land.” She smoothed Ava’s messy black hair away from her face and smiled slightly, reassuringly. “Over a century later, the land begins to flourish. Was it a curse broken during the last war when Kingdom and Alliance and Galatea and Daphnel fought together again?”

Ava blinked. “Was it, Auntie Ingrid?”

“I don’t know,” Ingrid admitted. “The goddess does not look kindly on those who harm their own family, after all.”

“Um…” Ava stared at her hands, wringing the edge of her blanket. Ingrid began to regret the story, fearing she’d give the poor girl nightmares, but then she flung her arms around her and mumbled into her shirt, “I’m really happy you were with the Kingdom.”

Ingrid, her heart skipping a beat and her jaw hanging open, could only return Ava’s startlingly powerful embrace. Her chin rested on her crown, and she allowed herself a smile. “I am too, Ava,” she said, patting her shoulder. “I am too.”

“I’ll also try and be nice to Ernest and Marius from now on,” she added. She tilted her head back to meet Ingrid’s eyes. “Do you think you can tell them this story too so they’ll be nice to me?”

Ingrid burst into laughter. “If they ask, I would be glad to tell them,” she told Ava. “For now though, I really think you should go to bed.”

Ava sighed but extricated herself from Ingrid’s arms. “Fine,” she grumbled right before a yawn split her jaws. She lay down before bolting up again. “Wait, Mama always braids my hair f—“

“No,” Ingrid interrupted with as much sternness as she ever injected into her voice for Sylvain (much good it did her for him). She stood and tugged at the blankets, beckoning for Ava to lie down again. “Come on, the quicker you go to sleep, the sooner it’ll be morning and you can see me one more time before I leave.”

“Ugh!” Ava groaned, and she threw herself back on her pillow, arms crossed even as Ingrid tucked her in. 

“Do you want your mama to kiss you goodnight too?” she wondered. “Or your papa?”

Ava yawned again, covering it with a hand before shaking her head. “They tuck me in every night,” she said.

“All right,” Ingrid agreed. She smiled and brushed her hair away from her face before leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Good night, Ava.”

“‘Night, Auntie Ingrid,” she murmured. 

Ingrid blew out the candle on the bedside table. She crept away from the bed, guessing that Ava would be sound asleep before she left the room. 

The corridor was dark and drafty as she shut the door behind her, but Ingrid knew the path to Felix’s study well. She would find him there, likely spending his evening with Annette and (unless he preferred to sulk in his bedroom) their eldest son. 

“Corrupting my daughter’s thoughts with your knightly stories again?”

Ingrid’s heart jumped into her throat when Felix’s voice interrupted her thoughts. Her eyes found him standing across from Ava’s bedroom door in the shadowy corridor, his arms crossed and a frown on his face. 

She recovered from her shock in time to scoff, “I thought you wanted your children to think for themselves. If you had a problem with me telling your children my ‘knightly stories’ you should’ve told me years ago.”

Felix hummed, his expression relaxing, which from him was as good as a concession. “Did she ask for  _ Loog and the Maiden of Wind _ again?” he wondered. 

Ingrid fell into step beside him as they walked towards his study. “How’d you guess?” 

He sighed, rubbing his face. “She always wants that one,” he grumbled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she could recite the whole thing from memory. Neither of the boys liked it nearly as much…”

Ingrid laughed and said, “As I recall it was one of your favorites too.” She nudged him in the side with her arm, teasing, “Remember how we acted it out and you always wanted to be Ky—“

“Fine, enough,” Felix cut her off. His ears burned red, and Ingrid couldn’t help snickering. 

Felix hadn’t changed much since the war, except maybe mellowing out a little when his and Annette’s first child was born. Annette softened him too (in some inconceivable way) though Ingrid rarely had the pleasure of flustering him. 

But she supposed she hadn’t changed much either.

“Actually,” Ingrid found herself admitting when they reached the study, warmer and better lit than the drafty corridor, “Ava also wanted a new story tonight.”

“She’s finally getting bored of Loog?” Felix asked almost hopefully. 

Ingrid snorted. “I doubt it,” she said, “but I do wonder...I think even you might’ve liked tonight’s story, though I confess it might not have been the most appropriate for her.”

He turned to face her, his eyebrow quirking with curiosity. “Really,” he said, sounding skeptical. 

Ingrid smiled, though it felt weaker than any so far as she recalled Ava’s wide eyes and horror. Her chest tightened with dread - maybe this story would be the thing that actually angered Felix - but she confessed, “I told her the origin of House Galatea.”

Felix stared at her, his eyes - amber rather than blue like Ava’s - wide. “What? That’s...hardly a chivalric tale.”

“It is in a twisted sort of way,” Ingrid argued mildly. 

“You would think so.” He rolled his eyes but buried his face in his hands. “I can’t believe you told her a story like that.”

”Nor I,” Ingrid said. “To her credit she didn’t seem too upset. You at her age, on the other hand, would’ve cried.”

”Are you trying to goad me into kicking you out of my castle?” Felix wondered in a low, irritated voice.

“Of course not!” Ingrid swore. “Ava, ah, she promised she’d try to be nicer to her brothers from now on,” Ingrid told him, unable to keep the amusement from her voice. 

Felix barked a short, sharp laugh. “That will last less than a day,” he predicted. “But really”—his eyes narrowed, flitting to her face before darting away again—“you couldn’t think of anything tamer? She’s only five.”

“Yet my ‘knightly’ stories paint unrealistic stories of real life,” Ingrid pointed out.

Felix sighed through his nose. “Ingrid…”

“It’s a story,” she reassured him, “and a story it will stay.” She rested a hand on his shoulder, gratified when he didn’t shrug it away like he would’ve not so many years ago. “They’re growing up in a better world than we did.”

The corner of Felix’s mouth quirked into the slightest smile. “I suppose they are,” he conceded. When Ingrid returned his smile, he grumbled, “It’s a boring world though.”

He laughed again when Ingrid smacked his arm in reproach, and that rare sound, she decided, made the pain of the past worthwhile. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m soft for dad Felix and Felix/Ingrid friendship...and no one asked but Ava ADORES Auntie Ingrid (Felix is a *little* jealous which Annette thinks is hilarious) and wants to be a pegasus knight just like her. and yes she has a minor Crest of Fraldarius
> 
> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you thought?


End file.
